


She's Got A Habit

by hyperbolic_jester



Series: Keeping Your Head Up [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/F, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, doctor mechanic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-18 18:48:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16522634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyperbolic_jester/pseuds/hyperbolic_jester
Summary: Raven came home to find a nasty surprise and now she has to figure out what she's going to do about it.





	She's Got A Habit

**Author's Note:**

> Please read this intro: I'm still figuring out how to use the content warnings, so I just wanted to be safe and add some here. I was struggling, because I have one paragraph that contains allusions to a truly horrific childhood, but nothing terribly concrete or graphic. So, I'm adding some warnings here because I care about everyone's mental health. If you still want to read and skip the paragraph, it won't be the same (otherwise I'd have cut it), but I understand taking care of yourself. The paragraph begins with the words "Memories beaded on lines of trauma..."
> 
> CW:  
> allusions to - child abuse, neglect, drug use, drug overdose, sexual abuse/prostitution

Raven held the wheel of the red 1958 Thunderbird loosely in her right hand at 12 o’clock, while her left hand gripped the car door through the open window. With the top down, the wind whipped through her long, dark hair. The light pollution reflecting on the haze of the New Jersey sky provided the perfect atmosphere for Raven to think about her current situation.

She was headed down Interstate 95, back from visiting Clarke and Lexa in Boston. A box of fentanyl patches with her own name on it became untaped from the underside of Abby’s dresser drawer when Raven had been looking for a missing pair of her favorite underwear at the Georgetown carriage house they shared. Raven threw the patches on their bed, grabbed her keys, and sped off without so much as a note or text message.

Clarke and Raven had cried it out together, and then drown themselves in pizza and cannoli. Clarke tossed back a bottle of tequila over the course of the weekend, but Raven still couldn’t bring herself to touch it. The smell evoked ghosts of cleaning vomit stains out of shag carpet and straining to lift with tiny legs to drag a body twice her size onto the rickety couch. Clarke insisted on taking care of herself after too much liquor on Saturday night trapped her in the bathroom for three episodes of True Blood. 

It was hard to tell which of them was angrier: betrayed daughter or deceived lover. Raven had spent most of the weekend eating her feelings in stoic silence while Clarke raged. Lexa hovered in the background, going on pizza, ice cream, pastry, and fried oyster runs, providing a listening ear while Clarke unleashed tirade after tirade about the monstrosity of abusing prescribing power. Raven supposed that Abby had merely betrayed Raven’s trust, not her profession. Merely. On the other hand, Clarke couldn’t overlook the fact that her mother had committed medical treason. Clarke’s fury culminated in a particularly cruel drunken message left on Abby’s voicemail after her mother failed to pick up any of the countless calls the household had placed over the weekend.

Lexa had been kind enough to offer up their spare bedroom for as long as Raven felt like she needed it. She’d thought about it for a few minutes, but she couldn’t bring herself to miss work. Now that she was barreling down the highway, she was rethinking her decision. Her heart ached at the thought of going back to the house to get her clothes. She took solace in the fact that Abby usually worked Monday nights. However, if she was using, she could easily be passed out at home. Or overdosed, Raven thought fearfully. It was a possibility that nobody had been willing to discuss after three and a half days of radio silence, but she was going back now and couldn’t ignore it anymore.

She saw an exit for the Garden State Parkway and impulsively turned off. Needing a more concrete plan than ‘show up and hope for the best,’ she was seeking out somewhere to do some serious thinking. She followed the familiar highways to Union Beach, a refuge she’d fled to in the rusty Buick stolen from her mother after she was passed out for the night. It felt better to have specific destination in mind.

The T-Bird maneuvered into a parking spot in the empty beach lot. She threw her shoes in the back and eased her feet onto the sandy blacktop. Her feet sank comfortably into the gritty sand on her way out to water’s edge. The mingled smells of salt and dead fish permeated the humid air. 

Raven waded into the icy surf up to her knees. Her ears picked up a light squeal off to the south from a giggling couple playing in the shallows on the edge of visibility. She struck out for a breakwater to the north, not wanting to contend with the tightness in her chest elicited by proximity to lovers seeking the magic of the ocean. The waves dragged sand across her feet, scouring the skin. She felt the current pull at her legs, her knee brace barely reinforcing her bad leg enough to remain upright. The churning swells disappear into the darkness blanketing the horizon.

The breakwater consisted of craggy shards of stone jutting out of the water. Raven hopped between the few flat rocks big enough to stand on, as sharp pebbles tore up the soles of her feet. She was beyond caring. Saltwater invaded her cuts with an acute sting. Then, she was at water’s edge, where the breaker plunged into the ocean. Tension built between her shoulders and in her gut, now that she was here. Tearing the thin, platinum necklace from her neck, a birthday gift from Abby, she gave it a disdainful look. She cocked her arm back, as if to hurl it out into the water, but her fist closed tightly around it. She couldn’t do it.

“Abby!” she heaved forth the the name into the night, all of the rage and despair that had been building the past few days, howling a primal scream lost to the surf. She erupted in a fit of violent tears, salty droplets from her eyes mingling with the saline spray of the ocean. Her loud, jagged sobs were lost in the tumultuous, slowly receding tide.

Memories beaded on lines of trauma like rain droplets on a spiderweb. It was lying to the teacher about why she was an hour late for the first day of kindergarten because her Mom was too strung out to bring her in. It was Fin throwing her eight years worth of birthday parties because it was always forgotten. It was “falling down the stairs,” “wrecking her bicycle,” and “tripping into a door” to every doctor she met. It was watching a dealer slam her Mom’s skull into the rain-slick sidewalk from the front seat of the car across the street. It was spraying Narcan up her Mom’s nose as a teenager on two separate occasions to save her life, and the one time it didn’t work. It was greeting her Mom’s johns at the door, followed by squeaking bed springs and heated moans through her thin wall; it was scalding showers when the rare stranger slid into her bed, while the blood money went into her Mom’s veins. Her thoughts spiraled out of control as eighteen years of suffering assaulted her senses.

Dark thoughts crept in, old and familiar, where she wildly considered allowing the current to take her, consequences be damned. They dissipated almost immediately this time. Raven had a good life, now, and just because this relationship was in jeopardy didn’t mean that the rest wasn’t worth living. Hell, Bellamy and Clarke would dredge the Atlantic so that they could resurrect her to give her a piece of their minds. She giggled for a moment, thinking about the livid conversation with whatever medium they found to channel her spirit.

Pulling the collar of her t-shirt up, she wiped a thin layer of mucous on her upper lip, having wept through her pain. Raven shivered to her bone marrow as the frigid water on her skin soaked in late September air. It was time to go. 

Once back on the beach, she fished through her pocket and pulled out her smartphone, grateful she’d sprung for the expensive waterproof case. A long list of unreturned calls to Abby’s cell, work, and home phones were the only numbers on her ingoing/outgoing call log. She hooked the bluetooth to her ear and pressed “Home” one more time.

“Abby, baby, it’s Raven. I hope you’re still alive. I hope you’ll get cleaned up. I hope a lot of things, but I know better than to rely on them. I still love you and probably always will, but I have to take care of myself. I’m not leaving you for good. Not yet. I’ll be at Murphy’s while, hopefully, you’re at rehab. I will be there to love you when you get out. But you need to be clean, first. I can’t do this if you’re not...”

Raven pressed “End” to kill the call. Tears crowded the edge of her vision, threatening to spill down her cheeks. She hiccoughed a quick sob. Her fingers danced over the screen, sending a brief text to John Murphy, who replied instantly, offering love and support, probably warned ahead of time by Clarke or Lexa. At least she had somewhere to be tonight. She would stop at the 24 hour WalMall to get some cheap clothes to wear until she was up to heading back to the house.

The walk back was torturous, the sand working its way into the wounds on her feet. She rolled the chain of her necklace between her thumb and forefinger. Sighing, she shoved it in her pocket. She could decide what to do with it later. The garbage disposal wasn’t going anywhere. The wind picked up, chilling her further. It smelled earthy, like a thunderstorm wasn’t far behind. Regret flitted briefly across her mind at getting so thoroughly soaked, but she had clarity now, and that was worth it.

Digging through the back seat of the car, she located Abby’s thick blue woolen blanket and draped it over her seat. No need for grief to ruin good leather. Raven jammed her bloody, sandy feet into her shoes and tossed a flattened paper bag atop the mats on the floor of her car. She settled back into the driver’s seat, shaking in the night air. She pulled the edges of the blanket to cocoon her body in her seat, to protect her from the wind while she drove. She clicked fruitlessly on the button that raised the top. So, the rest of the way to DC with the top down? With any luck, she would beat whatever inclement weather was on the way.

Raven maneuvered back to the highway. Her earpiece remained in her ear, a nod to hope that she still might hear from the troubled doctor. She adjusted the dial on her stereo system, the one nod to modernity in an otherwise antique car. Classic rock spilled out of the convertible, trailing behind her on the empty road. Leaving the New Jersey shoreline behind, she fled back to D.C., trading one ghost for another.


End file.
